Did you ever wonder just who Galileo was and what he accomplished?

By David McClelland

This is the first of a three-part blog series about historical figures. They will cover the lives of Galileo, Leonardo da Vinci and Sir Issac Newton.

I began to wonder about these important historic men while sailing aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship, The Freedom of the Seas, two weeks ago on a family vacation.

There were over 4,000 passengers and we took our evening meals in three huge dining rooms named after these men. Let's look first at Galileo.

Galileo Galilei  was born in Pisa, Italy on February 15, 1564. His father was a musician and his family belonged to the nobility, but they were not rich. Galileo never married. However, he had a brief relationship with Marina Gamba; she lived in his house in Padua, where she bore him three children. In 1610, Galileo moved from Padua to Florence, where he took a position at the court of Medici family.

Galileo made his first telescope in 1609, modeled after other telescopes produced in other parts of Europe that could magnify objects by three times. He created a telescope later that same year that would magnify objects by twenty times. With this telescope, he was able to look at the moon, discover the four satellites and Jupiter, observe a supernova, verify the phases of Venus, and discover sunspots. His discoveries proved the Copernican system, which states that the Earth and planets revolve around the sun. Prior to the Copernican system, it was thought that a universe was geo centric, meaning that the sun revolved around the Earth.

Galileo's belief in the Copernican system eventually got him in trouble with the Catholic Church. The inquisition was a permanent institution in the Catholic Church, charged with the eradication of Heresies. The inquisition had decreed that the Copernican proposition was heresy. In 1624, Galileo was informed by Pope Urban 0111 that he could write about the Copernican theory as long as he treated in as a mathematical proposition. However, with the printing of Galileo's book containing dialogue concerning the two chief world systems, Galileo was called to Rome in 1633 to face the inquisition again. Galileo was found guilty and was sent to his home near Florence, where he was to be under house arrest for the remainder of his life.

In 1642, he died in his home outside Florence.